Barry's Fish Shop stayed closed.
Instead of a tacky turquoise door to hold the CLOSED sign, an apocalypse-style barricade made of freezers and crates held the sign on the outside, shutting the shop off from the rest of the world.
Ty spent his mornings working at RiseX, his evenings with Eve, and his nights cleaning the destroyed shop, slowly reverting it to its former less messy state, and taking care of Barry.
Three days since the commotion with the three Falcon Raider gang members, Barry was still unconscious. Ty had totalled the damage to the old man's body and used what basic first aid he had the privilege of learning back when he lived with his family. He fastened makeshift casts around Barry's broken arm and shinbone, reset his jaw, cleaned and disinfected his more surficial wounds and applied bandages. Barry looked like a beaten up rag doll wound up in white cotton.
It was likely for the better that Barry was unconscious for this. Ty doesn't have access to the hard drugs that would truly be able to dull the pain, so if he was awake for the bone resetting, Barry would have likely gone mad.
Broken bones can heal. Ty knows that. Casts can heal them, if the bones inside are properly set. There is a chance, however long it will take, that Barry will be fixed.
'But that's only in theory. Can Barry really do it? Can I really do it?'
Ty's hands clench at his sides, nails digging into nail-shaped scars in his palms.
'Somehow, I have to.'
Currently, Ty sits on the end of Barry's bed with plenty of room due to the man's short stumpy body. Before bringing broken Barry inside, Ty had never been in his bedroom before, and so his eyes have been drifting aimlessly over the room.
The two false walls and two real brick ones that enclose the small space are painted a deep blue, likely to resemble the sea. There's three framed photographs hung on one of the walls; one of Barry with a grin and a big green fish, one of Barry with a bigger grin and a bigger blue fish, and one of five young men dressed in beige clothing smiling in front of an old non-commercial plane. That must've been Barry with friends when he was not much older than Ty.
Inside these dark blue walls, all that fits in the bedroom is the makeshift bed Ty and Barry are on and a pine wood desk with a black plastic chair pushed into it. There's lots of papers spread on the desk; tax papers, rent notices, bills... and in the back corner of the desk in a neat pile is a collection of yellowed envelopes with lovely cursive handwriting addressing them to "My dearest Barry Moore".
Ty's eyebrow raises, intrigued.
Taking in the room, it's become apparent the one thing Ty knew about Barry was that he was a fisherman- and he knew absolutely nothing else.
Did he have a love, friends, family? If so, where are they now? What was life like before he became a fisherman? Did he always live in Carnelian City? On the Southside? It occurred to Ty that he wanted to know more about what defines the old man.
The clearly aged envelopes were interesting to Ty, for one, because he had surmised Barry was a loner. After all, the only person he'd ever seen Barry with was Ty himself. However, they were an indication this may not have always been the case.
Ty had also surmised that Barry was broke. He didn't need to see the piles of bills as indication of that. That's why "working the cash" was the same as taking a break, and why Barry lies broken in his own bed, limited to Ty's clumsy first-aid.
Three years ago when Barry hired Ty, money was a little better for the old man. Since then, there's been a clear decline, and Ty knows Barry can barely afford him as a part-timer now. It would do Barry a bit of good to let Ty go, but in the back of his mind, he knew why Barry didn't:
'For me.'
Barry had a caring side to him you'd miss if you weren't looking, and sometimes even when you are.
'Don't dare come out 'till they're gone. If you do, I'll fire ye.'
Ty's head sags and falls to his lap.
The image of Barry's broken body in a pool of blood at the bikers' feet flashes before his eyes.
'That, too... was out of consideration for me.'
Ty's face contorts into a wince, replaying the horrid scene of the beat-up in his mind. Every recalled sound makes his body flinch.
'I shouldn't have tried to listen to him. I should've left the kitchen faster. If I had, maybe I could've saved Barry from that. And that greasy man was easier to hit than I thought! Why couldn't I have left earlier?!'
His fingernails dig deep into the scars in his palms.
Ty knew why he didn't leave earlier, and it made him want to punch something. Back then, he was scared.
He mutters to himself, his body trembling.
"M-murders... them, and-"
A groan cuts off his thought of despair.
Ty's eyes quickly dart to the man stirring in the bed.
"BARRY?!"
The bandaged man groans again as his swollen eyes slowly open. His voice is deep and hoarse.
"Too loud, boy."
"BARRY!"
Ty shouts at him, unable to hold back his sheer relief.
Barry winces.
"Sorry. How are you feeling?!"
The old man's eyes fully open and harden on Ty.
"Yer fired."
Ty's eyes roll.
"Not a great idea when I'm the only thing keeping you alive."
Barry lets out a dry snort.
"Yeah? If you really want to nurse me back to health, then that's on you, boy. But you best get in uniform. Bet you can find a couple of pink ones in yer size at the brothel down the road."
The old man's laughs sound more like deep toad croaks before turning into painful-sounding coughs.
Ty shakes his head with an exasperated sigh before adjusting the shinbone cast he noticed had loosened.
"Your joke's hurting you more than me."
With difficulty, Barry's body rises slightly to eye Ty's work on his shin.
"Oi! Ty! That's the most rubbish excuse for a cast I've ever seen! Listen 'ere, this ain't the first time I've carried some broken bones. Once had two broken legs fully healed without a single nudge from a doctor."
Ty wondered what kind of fishing trip resulted in the breaking of two legs, but he let the man continue his lecture with gusto.
"Listen real good, boy. I'm going to tell you how a man makes a real cast."
Suddenly Ty laughs, and Barry just grunts at the sound. Ty couldn't help it. He was genuinely too happy to have Barry back to his old crabby self after all this. It was a good sign- no, it was the best reassurance Ty could've gotten.
'If it's like this, Barry's going to be just fine.'
All in all, with Barry conscious and bossing him around again, Ty's life pretty much went back to normal.
At St. Bernadette, Eve's babbling was progressing.
"Tee, tee, tee, tee. Too, too, too, too, too, too, too. Ta, ta, ta, TA."
She gives a gummy smile under Ty's hand ruffling her white hair.
"Ty. That's me. Come on, say Ty."
The toddler just giggles.
And at RiseX... Ty finds himself standing in his boss' boss' office, before the expensive-suited man with his hands clasped authoritatively on the grand desk.
"Ty, I'm letting you go."